Speeding up quality justice (1)

Speed and quality are the ideals of justice everywhere. The search for these ideals continues all the time in our country, but the backlog gets longer simply because the cases pile up faster than they are disposed of.

Work, work, work. To be fair, the Supreme Court has not stopped fighting the problem. I have written 10 books on the subject during my judicial stint and a number of columns after I retired, the latest this year being on June 1 (“Unclogging the Court of Appeals”) and on Nov. 12 (“Hastening trials in criminal cases”). But the problems persist. Why?

To answer the question, it is necessary to look at the people, the resources and the facilities—the “men, money and machines”—of the judiciary.

Today, let me take up the most important of the three: the people, basically the justices and judges (and next Sunday, the resources and the facilities) who are required by the Constitution to be “of proven competence, integrity, probity, and independence.”

I think we should add “industry” to that list of required traits, given the 980,000 pending cases (as of June 2017) in the 2,400-odd trial courts (or an average of about 408 cases for each sala which, unfortunately, are not distributed equally such that some salas have over 1,000 while some others have less than 200) plus several thousand more in the three appellate courts and in the Supreme Court (where the average case load per member is 550 plus 50 new ones raffled monthly to each of them).

For easy recall, I have simplified the list of traits as the four “INs” of a good judge: “INtegrity, INdependence, INtelligence and INdustry.” I think that anyone who cannot devote at least 10 work hours daily does not deserve a nomination by the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) and an appointment by the President. A judicial career is not a walk in the park; it requires work, work, work.

Plague of ships. In addition to having the four positive “INs,” I think a good judge should be impervious to the plague of what I call the four negative “SHIPs,” namely, kinSHIP, relationSHIP, friendSHIP and fellowSHIP. Anyone who cannot cut their umbilical cords to their parents, brothers, sisters, children, cousins, girlfriends, boyfriends, schoolmates, town mates, partners, associates, compadres, comadres, fraternity brothers, sorority sisters, etc. should not join the judiciary.

Additionally, they must undergo continuous education and training at the Philippine Judicial Academy.

Finding good judges. Of the 2,400-odd trial courts, only about 75 percent (1,800) are currently occupied. Seats in the urban areas may be easy to fill up. But for insecure and outlying boondocks, it is quite difficult.

The Constitution mandates the JBC to nominate at least three qualified applicants for every vacancy from whom the President shall appoint one.

For the 25 percent (or 600) vacant trial courts, the JBC must screen, mentally and psychologically test, interview and nominate at least 1,800 lawyers who possess the four positive INs and who are impervious to the four negative SHIPs. In fact, to have real choices, it must select from double that number, or from 3,600.

To help in the screening of applicants, the JBC—during its 30th anniversary celebrations last Dec. 8—entered into a memorandum of agreement (MOU) with the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) headed by national president Abdiel Dan Elijah S. Fajardo and executive vice president Domingo Egon Q. Cayosa.

Under the MOU, the JBC shall provide all IBP chapters with the list of judicial applicants. In turn, the IBP shall advise the JBC of such information, favorable or unfavorable, that would help in the selection of “the best, the brightest, the most competent and the most upright.”

Ideally, a judge should have only 100, not 400, cases. To meet that ideal would require the creation of 7,400 more trial courts and, correspondingly, 7,400 more judges. It is not easy to establish more courts and to find the judges to fill them. That is why it is necessary to reduce the avalanche of cases at their inception, which I will tackle next week.

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